CHARLES DICKENS AMONG THE SCOIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15350, 13 January 1912, Page 5

CHARLES DICKENS AMONG THE SCOIS

(Ily J. SI.. Sloan.) ''lilossings on your kind heart, my dearest Dickens, for that, after nil, is your great talisman, and the gilt for which voti will ho not only most loved, hut longest remembered." A sentence of prophecy which lime, tends to fulfil! It was the opening passage cf a letter received by Charles Dickens, from l/m\ Jeffrey in 1814. What puzzling contrasts are men! .As editor of the Kdiiibiirgh Ileview Jeffrey had poured tho scorn of an implacable criticism upon Wordsworth, and denounced the Lake posts for "a. most formidable conspiracy against sound judgment in matters piwtic.il." The same Uoancrges of criticism, 20 years after, v/aa completely fascinated by Pickens's early work. In the simplicity, directness, and cunning force of his style "IJoz" appealed to Jeffrey, of whom Lord Holland remarked that ho had lost, his lined Scotch at Oxford, and only gained the narrow English. —Judge Jeffrey.— The- year 1811 found Jeffrey no longer wielding the tomahawk of criticism, but enjoying otinm cum dignitale in the office of a judge of the Court of Session. .\ltlioiiirh he might nut commend Pickens to the Scots in the magazines, he introduced him in the flesh to his. then increasing throng of northern iiilnaix-i-.s. The o'i| judge—ha was 70 then—drcve about in i-.dinbtirgh, it was said, telling everybody that literature had seen nothing "so good a.s Xoll since Cordelia." lie met Dickens in London, and informed him of a desire, widespread among influential Scots, that he should visit Edinburgh. —In Edinburgh.— Pickens accepted Jeffrey's invitation, and arranged to visit Kdinhurgh and mako, a. considerable tour in Scotland at midsummer of the same year—lßll. He was happy then in the earliest years of marriage. His Kate was by his side. Cradle and nursery were vocal with the childhood he loved. Accompanied by his wife, and with the eccentric Angus Fletcher, a wandering Scot, for his attendant, he left homo (or Edinburgh in June. Jetfrey had arrowed a reception for him. Scotland was preoccupied with theological controversy and Whig versus Tory politics; for the Disruption was but two years ahead, and Pr Chalmers was still at tho xenith of his national fame and power. And so, when the Scots wer? in a fev.r of debate about Non-Intrusion and the Divine Headship in the Kirk as opprced to the human headship of the civil magistrate; when the Calvinist hail the Arminian by the throat about Predestination; when tho Whig would not accept a dram or a pinch of snuff from a Tory, Dickens, young, handsome, gentle, winsome, tho wonder of tho hour in lettet6, appeared like a golden moon in soft beauty, rebuking tho menace of the clouds, among the ilhuninati of tho Scottish capital, A public banquet was organised in his honour. Jeffrey, tho chief promoter of the movement, fell sick, and was unable, to preside at the bampiet; his place was taken by John Wilson, better known by his nom tie guerre of "Christopher North." The banquet was an unqualified success. Seventy people were unable to procure seate. Nobody of consequence stayed away, excepting certain smallsoulcd Whig partisans who, much to Dickens's astonishment, suspected the Tories of the design to make party capital out of the event. Two hundred ladies of tho Order of the lilue Slocking attended. A cloud darkened the sky. Just, then the death of Sir John Wilkie was announced. Dickonn charmed the Scots by his speech on Scottish literature, and bv tho melting pathos of his tribute to the memory of \Vilkic. All I'Mir.burgh worshipped* the youthful hero. The Town Council, responsive to the popular ejeiioment, bestowed upon Dicl::ns the freedom of the city—an honour then rarely given to an Englishman. —" lSarnaby Uudge."— On tho.occasion of that historical first visit, Dickens s|»nt a month in Scotland, ■'where at intervals he completed tho writing of "Barnaby Itudge." He made an extensive tour" in thu Highlands, and explored tho weird wilds of Glencoe. In tho Horder country ho otood with moist eyes by tho grave of Scott in Dryburgh Abbey. Although an admirer of tho poetry of Hums, ho returned to London without visiting tho "auld clay biggin" and "Alloway's auld haunted kirk" and the "auld brig o' Dcon"; or any part of] llurna's romantic Wcstlands. Future years saw Dickens increasingly appreciated by the Scots. Ho returned among them in 1847,' when he opened the Glasgow Athcniuum, with an address of much eloquence and charm, in which he re- j marked: '\.e never tire of the friend] ships wo form with books." Just then ho creased to Kdinhurgh, renewed his intercourse with Jeffrey, and on seeing tho tfcott Sionumeul pronounced it a "failure." "It is like the spire of a Gothic Church," ho wrote, "taken off and stuck in the ground." Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee, all welcomed him when ho arrived later with readings from his own books. In 1858 his piohts from leadings in Scotland amounted to £509 after all expenses were paid. He received £600 for three evenings and ono morning in Glasgow. Dickens loved the Scots, albeit ho blundered by estimating the people- of J/undos as "in reaped of taste and intelligence below any other of his Scottish audiences." Longer acquaintance with Dundee would have convinced Dickens that George Gilfillan could not make all the people there windbags iiko himself, and that there are no such sharp wits, no such •brilliant scholars, no such intelligent lovers of art, anywhere else in Scotland as may be found in the. breezy estuary of the Tay. —The Triumph of Fiction.— Dickonn enjoyed in Scotland that historical triumphof fiction which he helped to complete. Hcforc the Wavcrley Novels appeared liction was forbidden among the "high-fliers" who gave continuity to tho Puritan tradition of the period when, according to thu genial cynicism of Sir Ling, "Jchuvab made a Covenant with Scotland." Even after Scott bad conquered, novels were banned i by "the unco guid," in the recurrent I periods when Puritanism, in its panoply I of prejudices against things human, camo i by a recrudescence in the wake of the | revival of theology and of devotion to j the Kirk. Hut no whirlwind of passing ] religions excitement could destroy or long ! hinder the healthy t,asto of the intelligent Scot for classic fiction. During the ln<;t century,.in homes in which a rigorous Puritan discipline was enforced, Scott, Dickens. Thackeray, wore exempt from lbs prohibition against novels. The average Scot perceived that the Song of Solomon, the fiook of Job, "Paradise l/isl," and the "PilgrimV, Progress" were not less novels than "The Heart of Midlothian" and "David f'opperficld.'' What Dickens sowed the "Kailyarders" reaped; and from the Kirk of the "unco gii.o" came forth the in ficticii of Harrio, Grockctt, lan .Maclaren, and their camp followers; who all shared the revulsion of feeling for fiction in Scotland which was completed when the majestic sun of Stevenson's genius appeared among the dissolving mist-; of lingering prejudice. —Great Appreciations.— Jeffrey and Carlylo were contrasted Scotiisu types. Both great men uppieciatcd the genius of Dickens. "I never can nlcfs and love yon enough," wrote Jeffrey to Dickens; and in another letter, "I want amazingly to see you rich." Carlyle was the Puritan modified by culture, and hifi idealism was of wider range than Dickens knew. Yet he too loved "Boz,"

whom lio described at tho death of tho latter in 1870 as "the (jowl, tho gentle, the high-gifted, tho over-friendly, nobis Dickens." Jeffrey discovered tho utilitarian element in the Scot which "keops tho Snblmth ami anything else it can get its hands on," and, without renouncing theology and the Kirk, holds the man to he effectually called who discharges his dntiiii with ability and success, while ctiltivathi" the pleasures of friendship, handing r.>wul the snuff or the dram, and passing with a smile or the sigh of Cnlvinist resignation frnm the wedding to tho funoral. Doth Jeffrey and C'arlylc, also, agreed to glorify the genuis of lfurns, who comhine:! many typo-, in his amazing personality, liiirns v/as the forerunner, of Sw>tt, and hiith prepared tin way for tha'fi ' appreciation of Pickens mrywlicro between Iterwick and Kirkdale which has made Ik'.- man and woman of the Knglish novelist lnrdlv less familiar at the Scottish lirefido than the man and woman of iSurns.